The Alamo Bowl

Our Oregon State Beavers had a good season and were invited to play Texas in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio Texas on December 29th. We flew down and met our good friends Jim and Cheryl Henderson who drove all the way. We had five days of fun attending all sorts of Beaver functions, the football game, and finally celebrating New Years Eve in real Texas style. We even won the first three quarters of the football game!

Holiday Time

Our Thanksgiving tradition has become a Friday event here, allowing the boys to spend Thursday with their in-law families. Nevertheless Sheryl puts on the full meal deal and we LOVE it.

Christmas starts at the in-laws then all assemble here in Corvallis.  Santa brought s the Liars Grow A Big Nose game this year which we all enjoyed, especially these two growing granddaughters who shall add a little sister in June!

Beaver Believers

Are You Ready For Some Football?

 

Last year our Oregon State University Beavers were just awful at football. Won 3 Lost 9. Ouch. So when the Recruitment Dinner was held last January we attended, and as you can see, we were enthusiastic about prospects for this year.

Every Thursday night we attend the coaches talk show where our coach, Mike Riley, and The Voice of The Beavers, Mike Parker, discuss this week's game. In the foreground are Jim and Cheryl Henderson who have become our best Beaver Believer friends.

Every home game we roll out our motorhome for pregame tailgating. This is the Langley family from Klamath Falls who joined us for the Washington State game.

Our most loyal Beaver Believer is Dave Hummel and sometimes his son Quinn and daughter-in-law Katie join us too.

Tailgating requires gourmet cooking. Here Dave prepares wild duck breasts wrapped in bacon. Yuuuuuuuum.

Reser Stadium, the home of 45,000 wild Beaver fans

This is my favorite photo. The enthusiastic student section only allows in fans who scored very low on their reading exams. Look closely.

This year we were predicted to be last in our leage of 12 teams. Ha!  After 6 weeks we have won all 6 games and are ranked 7th inTHE NATION!

 

 

 

So we are having a LOT of fun with our Beavers this year. We are actually schocked by all the success and the bubble could burst any week now but until it does...

GO BEAVERS!

From the Hoh to the Hospital. We Go See Washington

 The Hoh Rain Forest

This summer has been busy for Sheryl and me and although we had a great time in California with the family, Sheryl was sick and we just headed straight home. We could see our window of opportunity in August, so we packed up the motor home and decided to go see the parts of Washington State that were new to us. It was 100 degrees when we left here but after visiting Tyler and Meghan's house project we headed for the Washington Coast and out came the sweatshirts, and the heat was history.  We took three days heading slowly up the Olympic Peninsula viewing all the Lewis and Clark history sights, eating fresh crab, and having wonderful walks on the beach. The motor home life is lazy. The motor home life can be slow. The motor home life is good.  In Olympic National Park we headed up into the Hoh Valley and walked amongst some amazing trees. The cedar and spruce are unbelievable as they get 12 feet of rain per year.

We seem to stop at all the sights.

This tree was the only thing older than us in the park

After the rain forest we drove around to the north side of the park and up to Hurricane Ridge on a magnificent day. The 360 views were stunning.

We did have some fun meals in the little towns we visited but normally our chief cook whips us up something in the motor home then we have an evening by the camp fire.

Deception Pass - Whidbey Island

We had never seen North Cascades National Park, and knew nothing of it.  However being that it was a National Park we figured it must be worth seeing. Was it ever. The drive up Highway 20 just gets better and better culminating at Washington Pass. It's a gorgeous hunk of geology and well worth the drive.

We have to take pictures of everthing

Yeah, that's not the sign ya wanna see on your vacation.  As we traversed down the east side of the cascades we decided to visit Lake Chelan as it's a place I had often heard of but never seen.  It was pretty cool, a little like New Zealand's Queenstown. It hasn't the same natural beauty (no place does) but it has bunches of watersports and adventure activities for folks of all interests.  We had trouble finding a campsite but finally did and pulled out the chairs next to the water, poured a cool one, brought out the pistachios and life was good. We planned out the next day's 50 mile boat ride, trip to a waterfall etc., when Sheryl began to complain about her foot starting to hurt.  We headed into town and had a fun dinner but it was on the second floor and she struggled just getting up the stairs.  Even after wine her foot still hurt but now she could not get down the stairs unaided and was nearly in tears. She just could not walk and I rounded up a wheelchair for her, when a guy in a golf cart rescued her and drove her back to the motorhome where we could barely get her up the two stairs.  She was sure her foot was broken and I thought it was gout as she had had no trauma to her foot and it was obvious she was n excruciating pain. She later rated it as bad as childbirth! I had to drive back to the campsite to pick up our things and she was just wailing in misery by now. That was it. At her request/demand it was straight to the hospital where gout was diagnosed and morphine was injected in he backside, pills were swallowed, and after half an hour she could again bear the pain. Our vacation was over. It was a long drive home.  We are tired of these doctor adventures on our summer trips. Bummer.

You can tell this was taken on the way out as she is smiling. You shoulda seen the way in...

One More Pot

After Sheryl made her first "customized" pot, the one with the dinosaur for our good fiend Pat Ward, she began to incubate ideas.  About that time we were invited to the wedding of Quinn Hummel and Katie Vashaw. Quinn is the son of another good friend, Dave Hummel, and we have known Quinn since he was about a year old and he is a wonderful young man just finishing up dental school. Sheryl wondered if for a wedding gift she could do another personalized pot. But what design?  Dave and Quinn have spent hours and hours fishing the rivers of Oregon together for those beautiful wild steelhead.  They truly are magnificent fish and the most prized of all fish here in the Pacific Northwest. It seems that a couple of seasons ago Dave caught a 20-pounder, the fish of a lifetime, and decided to have it mounted (that's another good story).  He finally received the mount and proudly displays it in his home on Klamath Lake.  I had taken photos of the fish and we decided it would be just the ticket to serve as the design on this special wedding pot for Quinn and Katie.

                                       The Wedding Gift

                                           Rear View

                                         The "leftover" pot

In case the pot fell victim to one of the many bad things that can happen to pots in their creation, she actually made two, hoping that at least one would survive the workshop, the firing, and the packing up.  As luck would have it, both turned out beautifully so she gave her favorite to the Bride and Groom and the "leftover" to Dave, to display with his fish.

Eeuuuuuuu, now that's a bad eye!

Honest. I'd never hit her! But all of a sudden a vessel popped under the conjunctive and Eeeuuuuk! It's getting better ever day.

She's Makin' More Pots...

We've got this friend who likes dinosaurs...